How not to treat search and rescuers

KAMLOOPS - Two people who were lost in the woods south of Kamloops after their car got stuck on a back road last night found a ride into town.

Alan Hobler of Kamloops Search and Rescue says RCMP called them out around 5 a.m. to help locate two older people who were driving their 1994 Ford Station Wagon on a back road when they got stuck.

They left the car and began walking and were unsure where they were. They told RCMP they believed they were near Jacko Lake though cell phone pings pegged them in the Ross Moore Lake area east of Lac le Jeune.

The pair said they went to one cabin they found, but it was occupied, so they moved on to another one for the night. Hobler says the pair was asked to walk back to the occupied cabin to ask exactly where they are.

Hobler says they located the car around 8:40 a.m. near Ross Moore Lake and soon found a fisherman who said his buddy gave the pair a ride into Kamloops.

"It looks like the fisherman gave them a ride back to the vehicle and they tried to get unstuck but made it worse," Hobler says, noting there were a lot of beer cans in the area. "It sounds like alcohol was a strong factor, but we'll leave that up to RCMP to figure that part out."

While crews made quick work of finding the vehicle and determining the pair made it back to Kamloops safely, he is frustrated with how it played out.

"It's frustrating for us because they called for help. It was our members that jumped out of bed at 5 a.m.," he says. "And then they weren't very cooperative and left the search area without touching base with us."

Credit: Google Maps

To contact a reporter for this story, email Jennifer Stahn at jstahn@infonews.ca or call 250-819-3723. To contact an editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.

— This story was updated at 10:52 a.m., Sept. 18, 2015, to note the search is over.